McHaggis

@Hyperstar96: damn, must have missed it. Thanks for nothing, NL!

Get to the frigging price already, SS!

Can't get on the UK site for the UK stream

I'm waiting patiently to see how this works, since my first Wii broke and Nintendo wouldn't do anything to transfer my account to a replacement Wii I bought.

Hopefully, it will be a solution that works for me, so I don't have to knock on Shibata's door and ask him wtf he's going to do about it.

I noticed that the information for the game says 1-2 players; none of the current GBA games support multiplayer (only Ice Climber NES supports it).

@Angelic_Lapras_King: not necessarily, they may want those games to remain exclusive to ambassadors for a while longer. I think the GBA emulator for the ambassador games needs a bit of work before being saleable (for instance, sleep mode support needs to be worked in, icons need to be improved, save/restore points, etc). If they released the ambassador games, they'd earn no money for that game from anyone who's an ambassador. Releasing a new game wouldn't be much more work but would be a bigger earner.

@Obvious78: yes, it's likely 3rd party publishers (not developers) will set lower prices for their own games. It happens a lot on the 3DS and other consoles.

Sorry, sunshine officially sucked. So many people can't be wrong, and I'm almost never wrong

I had the Mario bundle, but my mum bought me the Turtles game, too. I know it gets a lot of criticism for its glitchy graphics and high difficulty, but I really hold the game dear from playing it across my childhood even after getting a SNES and a PSX.

I never played the first one, but I found the characters to be completely unimaginative when I saw them in Kingdom Hearts 3D. That's put me off a little, but I'm prepared to give the games a chance if I can play a demo or something beforehand.

Although I agree with a lot of the statements about Samus' role in Other M, it plays very well and the story is pretty good.

@Philip_J_Reed I think it's more the fact that it seems rude to charge your customers more for less. I'd like to think that Nintendo would, one day, be happy making more profit by pricing more fairly and attracting more consumers.

Hmm... pay £39.99 for a download that will only work on my 3DS, or £29.97 for a retail cartridge that the whole family can share...

Tough choice

Tri-force was the name of the arcade system developed by Ninty, Sega and Namco, so it's not like top companies of the like don't play well together.

With any luck, they'll resolve these initial teething problems soon. I'm still not downloading it, though.

@rjejr: the http://e3.nintendo.com site suggests that the Wii U will support SD and external USB storage devices. As for the flash memory, if they're trying to keep costs down I doubt it will be more than a few GB, perhaps 8 or 16 at a push.

I hope black will be a launch colour too. I'm not falling into the same trap I did when I bought a launch date Wii, I'd rather wait this time so I can be happy with the colour.

GAME have had the same option for a while now. Personally, I'm waiting for Amazon UK to offer a pre-order, though I doubt they'll offer it until the price is announced.

I can't wait for this game, I hope they announce a release date for Europe soon.

Looks boring... ZzZz...

@Mr_LzthBleh: I haven't played a Fifa game since Fifa '98; it was decent but I can't really see how newer football games could be that much different. But otherwise I'm sure Iwata couldn't give a monkey's about which games I'm playing.

@Thomas: Squenix have been pretty tight with collector's editions over these shores, so I think you're right. I was hoping for the KH 3DS for my gf but that never happened either.

@TheSolarKnight yep, class 10 is currently the fastest SD card speed.

btw, I'm not sure how accurate my information is, I just read some guy's benchmark on this site. I just figured I couldn't go wrong with a class 10.

I'd been running out of space on my card for a while now, so I bought this Samsung 32GB class 10 off Amazon UK for £17.

I didn't want to go lower than a class 10, since that's what the 3DS's default SD card is according to some benchmarks. Either way, I'm set for downloadable games and demos for a good while, I think.

@VincentV: why use fake plastic instruments at all? I have a set of Roland TD-12K drums that I hook up to RB and GH from time to time, and RB has the Pro Guitar and Pro Keys instruments. It would be a bit of a luxury to purchase something like that just for games, though.

I love GH and Rock Band, but I think they both have a lot of room for improvement. I think it would be nice if the music could be purchased game/platform independent. Just like buying music on iTunes and then transferring to your preferred digital music player, it would be great if you could buy an "interactive" song that could be transferred to your PS3/XBox360/Wii/WiiU and the games interpreted it or converted it to their own format.

Now do some good marketing by introducing special offers on the eShop

Needing both consoles is tremendously lame. How it should be done:

1. Console A transfers all data to SD card.
2. Console A is formatted.
3. Console B is restored from SD card.

If it were that easy, I might've considered trading in for an XL, but it's not, so I'm not.

@Aviator: the price here for all 3 games on the App Store comes to less than £5. So, there's an argument that it's worth paying money for, but not an argument that it's worth paying a lot of money for.

Updated graphics or not, who here wants to shell out £15 or more for it (no 3DS games have launched cheaper than this, to my recollection)? I Thought so...

Re: image with caption ― I didn't know Link was making an appearance in this game. Get a hair cut, you hippy!

Looks interesting, to say the least. Is it just me or does the game have a strange mix of typical-looking 3D rendered visuals and hand drawn sprites?

@arrmixer: I wouldn't go to the show just to play NSMB2, and most of the stuff seems to be targeting kids looking for careers in video games. I think I'll just wait.

"the game definitely isn’t worth its own weight in gold"

How much do digital games weigh, exactly?

If I don't hear the words "Fire" and "Emblem" in the presentation I might just cry.

Nintendo Europe seem to do a lot more for us RPG fans these days. I hope they keep it up.

It would be nice if they showed off Fire Emblem. Not heard anything on the European release since Iwata said it would be here in 2012 during January's Nintendo Direct.

...Yes, I would. My favourite thing about portable Castlevania games is collecting stuff and beefing up my character. I loved completing the bestiary, including finding out the rare drops.

This is disappointing news, to say the least.

@Jese_1 if nobody ever whinged, nothing would ever get done about anything and we'd all be paying 10 times as much whilst getting paid ten times as little. As (potential) consumers, we have a right to complain about things that irk us. If people think pricing is unfair then they absolutely should complain about it, though perhaps it's better off directed towards Nintendo than a news post on some website.

Also, a) I didn't complain about Mutant Mudds not being out here and, b) probably most of the people complaining own iPhones as the app store is the most comparative platform to the eShop.

In all fairness, European companies usually have to pay VAT (even for digital products and services). In the UK, VAT is currently 20%, so $9 ~= £5.75, 5.75 + 20% = £6.90. So a direct price conversion should have put the game in the £7.20 eShop bracket if rounding up.

Still, referring to my earlier comparison, Steam charge £4.99 for VVVVVV, which is £7.20 on the Nintendo eShop, with both prices being VAT inclusive. I'd happily pay £5 for VVVVVV or Mutant Mudds.

Not for me, I think £8.10 is overpriced too. Just like VVVVVV; at £4 (the price it is on Steam) I would have bought it the instant it was released. At £7.10, I feel like I'm being ripped off. It's not that I can't afford the extra £3.10, I'd just feel like I was gullible if I paid it.

Damn, I missed a trick there. I'd have pre-ordered the sh*t out of a black Wii U for £199.

@firearrow505 you mean like the Vita's analogue sticks? I'd take two circle pads over those tiny things any day. Circle pads need ridges for better grip, though.

Buying this at launch or not entirely depends on availability of the black model for me. I was a launch day Wii owner and I always felt I'd prefer it in black, but couldn't ever justify buying another. This time, I'll wait if black isn't available right away.

Halving the frame rate was probably the only feasible way of doing it without making last minute hardware adjustments that could have delayed the whole thing. It's clear they've done it in response to the initial outcry that came after the Wii U's announcement, which makes me wonder if any first party titles will even make use of two GamePads.

That sucks... but not for me

@Wolfcoyote: the fact that the game is in development is still news. If you can't take a little disappointment now and then, you need to find a more appropriate hobby. Besides, your post assumes that nobody in Japan reads this news blog, and that nobody outside Japan plans on importing the game.

I've been waiting for A Tale of Two Towns, only a month to go now. This looks awesome, too

The Wii controller and Nunchuk feels like the most ergonomic controller ever designed, to me. You can relax your hands when holding them, vary the distance apart and your hands wrap around both controllers with your fingers very naturally placed over the buttons. To double as a pointing tool and include motion controls, as well as the expansion port really makes it the swiss army knife of video game controls. It's a revolutionary invention that still really impresses me, so I'm glad it's sticking around for the Wii U.

For playing VC games, though, I love my SNES classic controller for a bit of added nostalgia.

This is a terrible idea. Skyward Sword wouldn't split well into multiple episodes, and I even felt like it was shorter than other Zelda games like TP, WW and OoT. Sure, they might increase the number of casuals, but they'd probably lose just as many core gamers in the process.

The problem is that casuals don't really play RPGs, action or otherwise. Most of the people I know aren't bothered about epic stories, they just want to shoot some bad guys, play football or stomp some goombas.

@ThomasBW84:

I think it would be easier to bring DS games as digital downloads than it was for the GBA Ambassador games, which use software emulation. DS mode is already built into the hardware with almost perfect compatibility. Unlike GBA emulation that requires extended testing, DS games could be released to the eShop in droves with all the confidence that it will just work (assuming system software adjustments were made with an update).

Many old DS games are no longer available new, which means Nintendo and the developers get 0 money from them. I'd like to see Nintendo playing it smart and offering to publish Classic DS games on the eShop at a price point that is competitive to used items. This should be enough for developers to jump at the chance to start making money from old games again.

Of course, I'd like to see more GBA games for sale, but the current pricing structure of games on the 3DS eShop worries me that I'd be much better off buying pre-owned GBA games.

'Is this one you'll be downloading?'

Who's going to turn down the chance to try a game for free?

@Mercury: you wouldn't say that if you were playing the game and frantically trying to dodge thousands of frickin' laser beams and spiky ball things. It's a download game, likely to be priced much lower than a full retail game, designed as a small distraction.

To me, this looks like one of the most interesting indie games I've ever seen.